Some embodiments described herein relate generally to enhancing the performance, robustness, extensibility, and Quality of Service (QoS) of the Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) protocol. In particular, but not by way of limitation, some of the embodiments described herein relate to methods and apparatus for allowing CAPWAP to use Transport Control Protocol (TCP) as the transport protocol for control plane signaling. Additionally, in particular, some of the embodiments described herein relate to methods and apparatus for using primary and secondary CAPWAP controllers for managing the network sessions of wireless access points.
CAPWAP specifies using User Datagram Protocol (UDP) as the transport protocol for control plane signaling. As a result, known applications typically implement complex retry and back-off mechanisms, and message delivery from a source device to a destination device is not guaranteed. Additionally in most enterprise networks employing CAPWAP, wireless access points are generally controlled or managed by a single CAPWAP controller. This involves the risk of loss of network sessions between a CAPWAP controller and a wireless access point if the CAPWAP controller fails.
Accordingly, a need exists for a more robust implementation of the CAPWAP protocol and to develop methods to reduce the risk of lost network sessions in case of failure of a CAPWAP controller.